Friday, January 13, 2006

Political self gratification

MAOTE: All right. Let's leave the necessarily petty bitterness of Geek Wars behind for a time, now, and talk about politics a little.

ME: Works for me.

MAOTE: It would pretty much have to, yeah. So... politics has pretty much always been a mess throughout the history of man. What's your silver bullet? What's the ideal form of government? And how do you get to it from what we've got?

ME: It... hmmm. 'Silver bullet'... you mean, some panacea to somehow resolve all the conflicts and problems we currently face, socially, nationally, and globally, as individuals, citizens of a nation-state, members of a race, and inhabitants of a limited ecosphere?

MAOTE: Uh... yeah. How would YOU solve the problems of the world?

ME: Given the Cosmic Cube or some other plot device that makes me all powerful... well... that's not a very realistic question, and I already answered it anyway in a novel and a couple of short stories. But it's a useful question regardless, because it underscores what I think is the fundamental problem with government, any government... we tend to expect too much of it.

MAOTE: How so?

ME: Well, America really is unique in human history, and in human social/political evolution. And I think that uniqueness comes largely from the fact that the American founding fathers had a previously unheard of political insight -- that wisdom is an individual attribute, one that is rarely or never found in groups of humans.

MAOTE: I'll pretend I don't follow you so you can explicate.

ME: Thanks! This self interview stuff makes expository dialogue so easy. Okay -- whether people are aware of it or not, what they hunger and thirst for, when they think of a 'better government' is a wise government. Whatever it is they want from their governing authority structure -- that it take care of them during natural disasters, that it protect them from harm, that it defend their individual liberties, that it keep taxes as low as possible and waste those taxes on idiocy as little as is feasible -- all of that boils down to 'wisdom'.

MAOTE: Which you would define as --

ME: Oh, Jesus. Wisdom is -- wisdom is the ability to learn not only from your own experience, but vicariously from the experience of others you become aware of, and to apply what you have learned in a manner that is consistently effective in resolving conflicts and solving problems.

ME: But there are different kinds of wisdom, just as there are different kinds of luck. One person may be very wise in the ways of, say, the Amazon wilderness. Another may be wise in the ways of the streets of Brooklyn. Another may be wise in the ways of, saying, getting a grant proposal through Congress, or handling a budget meeting in the English department of a large University. Political wisdom is the most demanding of all -- it requires that you be able to use your own experience, and the experience of others, to effectively and consistently resolve not only your own personal conflicts, but the conflicts of a society, a nation, a race, or, well, generally, a group of human beings... and humans are the most cantankerous and difficult to lead entities in the known universe.

MAOTE: So we long for wise government. But...

ME: But, again, wisdom is an individual attribute. You rarely... I want to say 'never', but I don't generally believe in 'never', so, rarely... see it in groups of humans. Put the six wisest men and women in the world in a conference room with coffee and donuts, and tell them to, I don't know, come up with a plan for directing traffic smoothly around the Super Bowl, and two hours later, they'll still be arguing over who has to brew more coffee, because, you know, the guy from New Zealand deliberately left half a cupful in the bottom of the pot so he wouldn’t have to do it, and the woman from Canada is resolutely refusing to take that last half cupful and get stuck with the job.

Wisdom is stable only within the individual; try to spread it over a group and it evaporates.

MAOTE: So to get 'wise government', you need to get one wise person and let them run everything.

ME: Yeah. Which is the basis of every human government, pretty much, prior to the founding of America. Caesars, dictators, tribal shamans, kings, monarchs, pharoahs, emperors... whatever you call the Big Boss, it is basically this principle at work... find someone who seems like an effective problem solver, let them solve the problems.

MAOTE: But that won't work for the long run, because your effective problem solver eventually dies, and then...

ME: Other, less wise people covet the power he accumulated. Material power is a form of wealth, just like anything else, and it can be passed along, or seized. Once you give it to an effective problem solver... or he or she just takes it, effectively solving the problem of doing so and proving themselves 'politically wise' at least to that extent... it multiplies and takes on a mass of its own, and there is nothing people covet more than power. So once your first 'wise person' dies, there is inevitably a fight over who will inherit his or her power...

MAOTE: …which is a problem in and of itself. ME: Yeah. And you have another problem, too. Wisdom rarely survives the accumulation of power. Take the wisest person you can find and give them absolute authority over a group of people, and that person will tend to, gradually or abruptly, become less wise.

MAOTE: Absolute power corrupts...

ME: We're trying to avoid clichés, but, yeah.. Anyway, that's the problem with seeking 'wise' government... you need to basically set up a government of one person. A tyranny, a monarchy, an imperium... whatever you want to call it. And however this form of government starts out, it won't stay 'wise' very long.

MAOTE: So... what... you try to find a way to make a governing group wise? How do you do that?

ME: I don't think you can. We’re just not that evolved or enlightened yet; any group of people is going to have problems getting along well enough to solve problems well. And our Founding Fathers knew this, too. They didn't bother trying to cut that particular Gordian knot. They decided wise government wasn't worth the effort.

MAOTE: And instead, they created… inept government?

ME: More or less. They tried to create a benign government, the only way they could… by, yeah, making it inept. Authority is going to become corrupt; you can’t stop it. So you have to set it up so that even when it does inevitably go bad, it can’t hurt you much.

So our Founding Fathers deliberately set out to create a form of government that wouldn't be wise, but that would at least be somewhat effective at what it needed to do, while, at the same time, spreading all the power across the largest number of people possible. See, they deliberately set up the opposite of the 'one wise person ruling all' model. They said 'okay, we'll have a lot of idiots handling everything more or less collectively… and when those idiots try to take advantage of their power, well, they won’t have much power to take advantage of'.

Things won't get done efficiently, and often they won't get done effectively... but they'll get done, just because, well, as S.M. Stirling likes to say, quantity has a quality all its own.

MAOTE: I don’t know. That seems awfully cynical.

ME: The most idealistically founded nation-state in the world was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Me, I’ll take cynicism; it generally works better.

MAOTE: That seems awfully cynical, too…

ME: That’s what a lot of people don’t get about the founding of the United States… it wasn’t an act of idealism. Our Founding Fathers were out for themselves. They were tired of having the Crown and the Church take their shit away from them, so they came to a new continent where they hoped they’d be far enough away from that nonsense to be left alone. Turned out they weren’t far enough away, and they didn’t feel like moving any further, so they fought… and when they succeeded in kicking the Church and the Crown out, they sat down and created a government structure meant to guarantee that the Church and the Crown would never be able to fuck with them again. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights are not idealistic, they are very selfish… they are documents that say, ‘you can’t mess with us; these are all the ways you can’t mess with us, now leave us alone’.

MAOTE: You make our Founding Fathers sound very libertarian.

ME: Yeah… I don’t know. ‘Libertarian’ has turned into one of those words that means whatever you’re pointing to at the time… a lot like ‘Republican’ and ‘conservative’, actually.

MAOTE: You don’t think ‘Republican’ and ‘conservative’ are terms that have a specific meaning?

ME: Okay, I put that badly. I think ‘Republican’ and ‘conservative’ have become very successfully marketed brands that no longer have a great deal to do with what they are placed on. Our current Republican Party no longer has particularly Republican values. And the people we point at and refer to as ‘conservatives’… well… to be conservative is actually to be someone who is trying hard to protect the status quo. Conservatives, for the last twenty years or so, have been fighting hard to undo the status quo. The entire modern conservative movement is a backlash against the ongoing success of progressive government and social policies throughout the 20th Century. The ‘status quo’ they are trying to protect is from the 1950s… and not the real 1950s, but some idealized, Archie Andrews at the malt shop, Father Knows Best 1950s that never actually existed.

MAOTE: Yeah, I see what you’re saying. But you don’t think there are still Republicans out there who believe in Republican values… you know… states rights, the Constitution, patriotism, law & order, individual liberties… family values… whatever the hell it is Republicans believe in…?

ME: They want Federal laws that prohibit gay marriage, abortion, and flag burning. If they can’t get those through Congress, then, sure, they want a Supreme Court that will weaken or throw out the existing Federal laws, so they can legislate whatever they want on a state level. They want rule of law for a Democratic President, but a Republican President can do whatever he wants. They want to keep American troops home if Clinton wants to send them somewhere to save lives, but they’re perfectly happy to see them sent off on an illegal invasion without proper equipment if a Republican president does it. They’ll get up in arms about the body armor thing, sure, until a Democrat uses it as a campaign issue, then body armor is for wussies. If a Democrat lies, cheats, or steals, they should resign immediately, then go to jail. If a Republican does it, they’re a hero and it’s a damned shame those worthless America hating liberals managed to drag such a great man down.

MAOTE: So you’re saying that conservatives and Republicans are hypocritical…?

ME: I’m saying… well, no, first, they aren’t. But leave that aside for the moment. I’m saying, right now, we shouldn’t call them ‘Republicans’ or ‘conservatives’. Those words mean different things, and stand for different things, than the current groups labeled with those words. It’s misleading. We need to call them something else.

MAOTE: Such as?

ME: I don’t know. The Power Party works. It pretty much sums up what they’re all about.

MAOTE: You mentioned that you didn’t feel they were hypocrites, despite the endless litany of ‘they said this then/they’re saying this now’ that anyone can reel off regarding the Republicans and conservatives. How do you figure that?

ME: Well, the left wing keeps track of that stuff. Left wing blogs exult in it, they constantly point out ‘the Republicans are being hypocritical, blah blah blah, they wanted to send Clinton to jail for perjury, but they defend Bush when he authorizes illegal military action, imprisons Americans without trial, signs off on torture, initiates illegal domestic spying programs, lets his aides out covert CIA operatives, etc’. All of these things are illegal, indictable, unConstitutional, and by any sane standards, far worse than Clinton playing semantics to avoid answering a question about his damn sex life that wasn’t anybody else’s business but his, his wife’s, and Monica Lewinski’s, anyway. So the Republicans and conservatives are hypocritical, because, you know, they have one standard for Democratic Presidents, and another for their own. That’s the gist of it.

MAOTE: And you’d argue with that?

ME: The Republicans and conservatives aren’t hypocritical. They want power. They want influence. They want authority. They want wealth. They want those things, and they will do whatever they have to do to get those things. They aren’t hypocritical about it. When Clinton was in office, he diminished Republican power and influence; they did everything they could to get rid of him. With Bush in office, they do everything they can to support him… as long as his presence in the Oval Office is working toward their goals, which are now and always have been, securing and increasing their own personal and political power.

MAOTE: So, they’re being true to themselves…

ME: Always. It’s like calling Rush Limbaugh a hypocrite because he wants to put every junkie in jail and every drug pusher on Death Row… until he gets hooked on Oxycontin and starts getting illegal scrips from his maid. But he’s not a hypocrite, because Limbaugh doesn’t really care one way or another about drug addicts and drug dealers, what he cares about is his own power and wealth. And he secures and increases those things by securing and increasing his audience, which he does by telling them whatever they want to hear. He’s not a hypocrite… well, he is if you listen to what he SAYS. But not if you watch what he DOES. He believes one thing and says another, yeah… but the truth is, he has always been out for himself. What he says to get what he wants is going to vary somewhat as what his audience wants to hear changes, but, still, he’s always been true to himself.

MAOTE: Well, okay, but I’d still call them hypocritical. They say one thing, they mean something else.

ME: Oh, they’re lying scum. But it’s important to understand that whatever they said when Clinton was in power, they didn’t really mean it. Everything the Power Party says basically translates as “Get out of our way, give us what we want, shut up, roll over, get out of our way, give us what we want”. That’s what it all comes down to. They change the talking points as it suits that underlying agenda, but the underlying agenda is always there. And when liberals play “gotcha!”, they honestly cannot understand how the Power Party can just stand there and say “we never said that” or “9/11 changed everything” or “fuck you, you’re an idiot”. The liberal attitude is “Don’t you people have any shame?” But they Power Party has no shame, because they feel they have nothing to be ashamed of. They set out to get power, anyway they can get it, and they are doing that.

MAOTE: Yeah, but… I mean, that’s all politicians in a nutshell, right?

ME: I suppose. You’re not going to run for office if you don’t want power, certainly. But people want power for different reasons. The current conservative movement in America started out more or less ideologically pure. It was a backlash against the steady success and expansion of progressive social and government policies over the course of the 20th century. People who felt threatened by a world that was changing too rapidly for them, and that seemed to be incorporating too many different, even alien elements in it, were looking around for a way to slow things down for a while, or even turn the clock back. That was what the current conservative movement was all about, back then… just trying to give a voice and some influence back to a segment of Americans who felt that as minorities gained more influence, they themselves had become marginalized.

MAOTE: Which is ridiculous and insane, as, you know, Caucasians were and are still a majority in America, Christianity is still the majority religion, white males still essentially run nearly everything…

ME: I’m not arguing with that; in addition to being ridiculous and insane, the conservative movement has always been mean spirited and selfish. You pretty much have to be, to believe that the world is okay the way it is and we should try to keep it this way. That’s essentially the ‘I got mine, now you get yours, but keep your hands off mine’ attitude, and that’s conservatism in a nut shell.

MAOTE: So when you say they were ‘ideologically pure’…

ME: I mean they were trying to get into power so they could accomplish a certain social agenda. It was a stupid, crazy, mean spirited, regressive, crypto-medieval social agenda, but they felt they had an honest grievance. I mean, they grew up in a world where a white man could tell a Polack or a Jew joke at work, and if it offended someone, they’d better just shut up about it. White guys could have a bikini babes calendar on their desk. They could pat the secretary’s ass. Management didn’t have to explain why they wouldn’t hire a woman or a black guy. Every church had a cross on the top of it. You didn’t have to dial 1 for English when you called customer service.

MAOTE: It was like Paradise for skeevy white guys.

ME: Yeah. They wanted that back. They genuinely felt that they had a grievance… that in the midst of all this seemingly sudden pluralism, where every other culture and race was finding a voice and showing ethnic pride, the Caucasian race and culture was in danger of being minimized and lost.

MAOTE: You almost sound wistful.

ME: No, I’m not at all happy about having my own ethnicity intrinsically coupled with bigotry and hatred, thanks. Yeah, it bothers me sometimes that female empowerment is considered inherently good, while male empowerment is considered to be objectionable, and I don’t like affirmative action… I don’t think you get rid of bias by reversing and then institutionalizing it. I think ‘the level playing field’ may be the best phrase Clinton ever introduced into our social lexicon, regardless of how much of a joke it’s been turned into by conservatives. All I’m pointing out is, when the modern conservative movement began, they had an actual social goal. It was a hateful social goal, but still, the power they were trying to attain was meant to serve a greater end.

MAOTE: And you think that’s changed?

ME: Oh, absolutely. I think people like Newt Gingrich and Dick Cheney and George Bush and Tom Delay are pretty clearly into power for power’s sake. They say whatever they need to say to keep their core supporters engaged… they’ll whore to anyone that can get them votes, as long as it doesn’t actually cost them votes… but they no longer care about the agenda they preach. They want power and wealth for its own sake.

MAOTE: You’re saying they aren’t even trying to implement a conservative agenda anymore? Isn’t that good news?

ME: Well, they sure as shit aren’t trying to implement a liberal, progressive agenda, so no, it isn’t. They’re already rich and powerful, so they are trying to change the laws to make themselves more rich and powerful. They’re cutting taxes for the wealthy, they’re setting up domestic spying programs, they’re deregulating every industry they are heavily invested in, they’re keeping the U.S. out of any treaties that would cost them money, they’re waging a war to make sure we have a supply of petrochemicals for the remainder of their lives, because they sure as shit don’t want to their portfolios to take a hit from viable alternative energy. People are upset because Alito is going to get rid of Roe vs. Wade, but that’s a smoke screen. Bush and his crew want Alito because, like John Roberts, he is heavily pro-wealthy and pro-business. With him on the court, they can completely gut the EPA, and no major corporation is ever going to lose a big lawsuit again.

MAOTE: So you don’t think they’re going to start up concentration camps for Arabs or Mexicans or anything?

ME: Not unless they can make a profit doing it. Bush actually wants to legalize all the illegals in the country, because it will effectively create an enormous cheap labor class. His crew has no pragmatic objection to it, but it’s going to cost them votes with their white constituency, so they’re sitting on it for now. Once they get Alito on the bench, though, they’ll go after the Federal minimum wage next… they’ll find some argument that it’s unConstitutional. After which, watch how fast illegal immigrants get driver’s licenses and working papers… and all the jobs Americans won’t do, at 35 cents an hour.

MAOTE: Any other predictions?

ME: They made bankruptcy much harder to file to please the credit card companies. Watch for it to become illegal, and watch for debtor’s prison to make a come back. Then watch for indentured service to come back, too. It will, effectively, be legalized slavery… people who owe money to corporations will be able to be forced to pay it off with labor contracts, or go to jail, and, most likely, shortly after that, they’ll make it legal for any adult who wants to to sell themselves into indentured servitude, too.

MAOTE: Sounds bad.

ME: Yeah, well… it will probably be a generation or two before they let parents sell their kids, but… yeah, if we don’t derail this thing, it’s going to get bad.

4 Comments:

I'd have to agree with most all of what you said, and the things I do differ on don't add up to much.

However, that doesn't change the fact that I still strongly disagree with what I perceive as the backbone of the Democratic/Liberal agenda: namely the destruction of anything remotely resembling morality in this country.

Abortion.When I say I've heard all the arguments in favor of simply allowing any and all abortions to take place based solely on the mother's desire, and shot them down, I'm not kidding, and I've got evidence to prove it. This link: http://forums.philosophyforums.com/thread/17057/1 is to a thread on the topic where I, posting as CognisOcculted, pretty much single-handedly defeated every defense of unfettered abortion offered by its supporters. (It should come as no shock to anyone who's ever met me that I engage in this sort of thing. It's what geeks like me do.) If you care to read it all, you'll see my position change from a simple strong suspicion that abortion-as-contraception-after-the-fact is immoral, to a refined argument in favor of acknowledging the unborn as human, and extending to them the same legal status as the born. I knew it was wrong, and thanks to repeated efforts to convince me otherwise forcing me to examine and refine my position, I managed to prove it in a very difficult court of opinion.

So I know it's immoral, and yet the L/Ds want it kept legal. In fact, keeping it legal is one of the reasons many women who support them do so.

(Again, I'm not in favor of a complete ban, I only want contraceptive abortion outlawed in cases without strong mitigating factors (rape or incest), although I do favor making the child a ward of the state rather than killing it if counselling can convince the mother to keep it. Yes, I'm aware that would mean 98% of abortions in this country would fall under that category. The question is, are you?)

This is just one of the objectionable things supported by them that you call 'social progress' or 'progressive social thinking'. Many 'social progress' ideas I agree with, like desegregation or equality between the sexes, but these people need to be a little more selective about what counter-culture ideas are worth supporting. Things that advance and improve society, like racial and sexual equality, are good. Things that degrade, undermine, and damage society, like unfettered abortion, open homosexuality (and pretty much anything else that tells everyone that sex is a game and their genitalia are toys to be played with) and institutionalized glorification of ignorance and laziness (the current Welfare system), are bad.

If the L/Ds could be a little more selective about what social 'progress' they supported, I'd join them.

What are we progressing to when we tell ourselves that sex is a toy, children are disposable, and responsibility is a dirty word? Before you get up on me about my stance on abortion, ask yourself what you'd think of a woman having her third entirely voluntary abortion because birth control is too much hassle for her to deal with. Is it wrong of her? Why? Why doesn't that apply to her first abortion, or to any other woman's? Why is it ok to kill one baby to avoid the consequences of our actions, but not more?

So what am I supposed to do? People love to say: 'When Clinton lied, nobody died.' Well, when the Money-Grublicans lie, cheat, and steal, less people die than when we have 21 million babies exterminated so their moms can avoid the icky consequences by 'controlling their bodies'. What a joke. If they were controlling their bodies, they wouldn't GET pregnant.

This is why I despise both parties, and will never support any of either's candidates ever again. Because I never get a good choice with them, so it's better not to choose at all.

Open homosexuality and legalized abortion have one thing in common:they are personal choices that aren't anyone else's business.

I know you'll never believe that, and that's why I'm not going to bother arguing with you further on either point, specifically. However, while I am deeply uncomfortable with both topics, unlike you, I am not willing to say that my discomfort should be the basis of law. I do not believe government has a responsibility to legislate the world into a place where I will always be entirely comfortable.

The conservative/liberal dichotomy is, essentially, this: there are many points of view in the world, many ideas of good and bad, proper and improper, appropriate and inappropriate. Conservatives refuse to accept the validity of any view except their own; to them, all reality tunnels outside the one they find most comfortable are not only alien, but anathema, and must be destroyed.

Liberals, on the other hand, are willing to accept that simply because something isn't right for ONE individual, that doesn't mean it won't work for another individual. The liberal mindset is, if it isn't hurting me, okay, you can do it. If it is hurting me, okay, let's look at what's involved here, because my pain is perhaps not as important as, say, an important social issue, like individual privacy and the freedom to choose what will and won't happen in, with, and to one's own body.

Conservatives aren't about that. If it hurts a conservative... or offends one... then they're loading a pistol and heading for the door. Of course, they justify this by saying it's not offending THEM, it's offending GOD, which to my mind, simply exacerbates their original arrogance... not only do they know what's best for everyone else in the world, but they are on intimate speaking terms with the Almighty, and they comprehend The Thoughts of The Creator of the Universe. That's pretty heavy shit, especially given how many conservatives don't seem to be able to understand how their TVs work, or why they should unplug the toaster before they try to fish their bagel out with a fork. They can't figure out how to program their VCR, but they know the Mind of God. Yeah, right.

If I were a conservative, I'd want every church closed, I'd want alcohol made illegal again, I'd want every Warren Ellis fan imprisoned, and I'd demand that everyone who ever voted for either Bush, or for Reagan, be lined up and shot.

Emotionally, I don't find any of these to be bad ideas, but... I am willing to live in a world where other people are allowed to disagree with me, and voice their own dissenting opinions, and live their own vastly different lives, from me. And all I want from them, is the same courtesy in return.

Conservatives, on the other hand, feel no need to extend that same respect and regard. If you disagree with them, you are not only wrong, you are hateful, heinous, an enemy of America, a traitor, a blasphemer, objectively pro terrorist, a sinner, a reprobate (it means 'foredoomed to hell'), the scum of the earth, subhuman, and you should be locked up without legal process, tortured, and eventually executed. Conservatives are not tolerant. They know what is right and wrong for them is right and wrong for everyone else, and that's that, and they will take to the street with guns to enforce their peculiar world views if they can get away with it.

One of the most common conservative laments is the pussy-ass liberal legal system that actually keeps good decent law abiding Christian Americans from going out and straight up lynching godless agnostics and other subversive, indecent, anti-American elements. After all, we're at WAR! Conservatives are always at war; if not with terrorists, then with sedition spreaders, or Satanists, or commies, or abortion doctors, or whatever.

I'm on record, I hate abortion. I really do. But I do not know, for a fact, that a fetus is a child, and I do know, for a fact, that it is something growing inside another human being's body. I would prefer to live in a world with perfect birth control, where all pregnancies were volitional and sought after and all children are born and raised in fine, loving households. But I don't get to live in that world, at least somewhat because of conservatives who refuse to allow kids to be given access to birth control, and religions that teach that birth control is a mortal sin.

Whether or not someone else has an abortion is none of your business, Nate, just as it's none of your business who anyone else sleeps with, or walks down the street holding hands with, for that matter. When you can carry a child to term within your own body, then you make your own decisions about whether or not you want to.

You and I have tried hard in the past to avoid this topic coming up between us, because whenever it does, it threatens to seriously come between us, and I don't want that to happen.

Obviously, you feel strongly about this, so say whatever you like about it on your own blog. But when you have in the past, I've ignored it, because I don't want to fight with you about this, our friendship is more important than that. I would appreciate it if you would extend me the same courtesy on my blog, because not only do I not want to fight with you about it, I don't want to just delete your comments, either. It's a level of disrespect you don't merit... but I do NOT want to discuss this topic with you. It won't be good for us.